Francesca Foffano

University of York

Francesca's work represents her fascination with how players elaborate and understand complex situations in video games. She likes to use mixed methods (both qualitative and quantitative) to understand high-level player perception in video games using her competencies in HCI (MSc at the University of Trento) and Psychology (BSc at the University of Padua). Prior to joining the PhD, she developed international experience in industry and research. She worked as Research Fellow on AI and ethics for the European project AI4EU at ECLT (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) and on players' perception of adaptive videogames at Reykjavik University. She also was involved as UX Strategist in creative content for MediaMonks headquarter (Amsterdam).

A description of Francesca's research:

Players will tell you exactly when they got stuck playing a game, but how we define stuck in the first place is still open to discussion. This PhD research aims to identify how and when this happens to help in predicting when players need support. The goal is to smoothen the player experience by reducing the need for external support (such as online guides, walkthroughs, and online forums) that might affect player immersion. The current stage of the research uses in-depth interviews to understand what players have in common, no matter what task they are doing or game they are playing. So why rely on user tests that consider singular test cases instead of understanding where they originate?